There are a number of current sensors used in industrial applications. Examples are motor control, uninterruptible power supplies, variable speed drives, welding power supplies and the like. There is a trend toward smaller size and lower cost for these current sensors. A number of designs use external magnetic fields, such as, for example, U.S. Pat. No. 3,461,387 which uses two or more coils and it is a device that detects external magnetic fields, not current. The use of a saturated magnetic core has been shown in U.S. Pat. No. 5,239,264 and creates a field current in a coil. U.S. Pat. No. 5,831,432 uses a pair of magneto-impedance elements to cancel out uniform disturbance magnetic fields such as the terrestrial field.
The use of an amorphous wire has been proposed in U.S. Pat. No. 5,994,899. The amplitude of the voltage is asymmetrically varied with a variation in an externally applied magnetic field. A similar use of asymmetrical magneto-impedance is shown in PCT publication WO 02/061445 A1, which is used as a current leakage detector.
U.S. Patent Application Publication No. US 2003/0006765 A1 discloses a sensor coil on an open core, asserting higher accuracy and miniaturization. U.S. Pat. No. 6,512,370 also uses a coil on an open core.
In traditional Hall effect and MR current sensors, the core is used to concentrate flux on a sensor and to partially shield stray fields. Because these sensors have a gap, it is not possible to completely shield external stray fields.
When the loading of coils is used to sense current, the magnitude of the impedance changes with stray field, temperature, part variation and the like. Thus it is not practical to construct a current sensor that relies on an absolute value of the impedance.
In some devices, it is necessary to have some feedback to improve accuracy. This is not a good solution, however, because an additional coil would be required to provide the feedback signal.
It would be of advantage in the art if a small, inexpensive sensor could be developed that would occupy a very small space, in the order of a 10 mm square footprint.
Yet another advantage would be if a sensor could be provided that is capable of sensing both DC and AC current.
It would be another advance in the art if a feedback coil could be provided in a current sensor without adding additional cost and bulk to the sensor.
Other advantages will appear hereinafter.